[Avodah] asher yatzar

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, September 20, 2006 9:23 am, R David Riceman wrote:
: From: "Micha Berger" <micha at aishdas.org>
:> I think the point of the berakhah is the necessary complexity. Not that the
:> design is flawed, but that it supports so many things because it's complex.
:> With complexity ought to come fragility.

To revive a point lost by RDR's ellision: I cited my own opinion AFTER
presenting a different shitah found in the Ri bar Yaqar and the Avudraham.
This is therefore the less well thought-through of two possibilities.

: How are we do harmonize this with the doctrine of God's omnipotence? Doesn't
: the Ramban somewhere suggest that in the Messianic era God will give us
: sturdier bodies?

No problem with omnipotence, at least according to the Rambam: Obviously the
probability of failure of a system that includes both X and Y will be greater
than the probability of failure of a system that only includes X. Since the
Rambam holds that Omnipotence can't defy logic...

The Ramchal, however, holds that logic is a nivrah, and therefore Hashem isn't
bound by it. But in that case, we chucked my ability to reason an answer out
the window, and for that matter, the tools by which you reasoned your way to
the question.

The Ramban says that after techiyas hameisim (which he does NOT put at the
same time as yemos hamashaich) we will have stronger bodies. But it doesn't
change the fact that even if those bodies had an inappropriate opening or
blockage, they wouldn't work. It sounds like you're asking why HQBH made
disease possible altogether, and if He had too, why make a berakhah thanking
Him for it? (Which is not the angle by which I understood the question to
begin with.)

First, there is the kelalah of the nachash -- people are given illness as an
opportunity to turn to Him. No illness would mean that He doesn't want to hear
from us. (Not sure I'd want to run with that answer, but it's possible.)

Second, we speak of chalayim ra'im vene'emanim. Why do we praise them as
"ne'emanim"? Because they leave when their job is done, even if it would make
it look like an AZ cured the person. (R Aqiva, AZ 55a)

Choli has its role, whether for the above reason or something broader. The
Ikkarim diffrentiates between the current life and the one after techiyas
hameisim (he believes both are finite) in the differences in challenges each
kind of life would provide. In the 2nd life, all challenges are self-imposed,
overcoming our own limitations, not those of our bodies or the world around
us. To be capable of using that opportunity, we must have gotten beyond the
growth possible in this lifetime.

But I don't think that's what we're talking about here, because we're not
talking about illness. We're talking about how much more rare illness is than
in a system of lesser complexity that we would have designed. You might ask
why the guf needed to be complex; but once it did, the rarety of illness
demonstrates His Wisdom in that design.

(As I asked earlier on this thread: How much more complex is a human than MS
Word? How much more rarely does the system "go down"?)

-mi
http://www.aishdas.org/asp